Detroit Colony

Using French Casablanca and colonial exhibitions ascase studies, the paper adopts a postcolonial perspectiveto conceptualize contemporary Detroit as acolony- an exotic zone of experimentation and creativelicense necessary for the maintenance of architecturedisciplinary identity. It’s argued the importance instudying these forms of colonial architecture is notsimply to provide a more inclusive understandingof architecture or to lament the stereotypical racistrepresentations of colonies in built form, but to underscorethe operationalization of difference at particular,situated historical moments. This speculative paperaims to historicize and contextualize seemingly newexperiments in architectural and urban form in Detroit.Situating them as part of a longer legacy of colonialurbanism creatively, it re-imagines them not as romanticfantasies or ineffective failures, but as charged,socially produced spaces borne of recurring strugglesfor power, meaning, and representation in the builtenvironment.

Volume Editors
Luis Francisco Rico-Gutierrez & Martha Thorne

ISBN
978-1-944214-08-1